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THIRD WARD TRAITS 



/ 

Charles Mulford Robinson 




The Genesee Press 

The Post Express Printing Company 

Rochester, N. Y. 



51093 

COPYRIGHT APPLIED FOR. 

Editioji 0/200 copies prhited December, i8qq. 



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Most of the material which has been brought 
together in the following pages has appeared from 
time to time in the writer's department of a local 
newspaper. Occasional and fugitive as the pieces 
were, friends were good enough to suggest that, 
taken together, they would present a picture (the 
only one in existence) of the characteristics of a 
greatly loved, if very quaint and picturesque, little 
section of Rochester. Accordingly, pains have 
been taken to give harmonious connection to what 
were only extracts, as well as that degree of per- 
manence which should belong to a record of 

Third Ward Traits. 

C. M. R. 



^birb Marb Avails. 

There is a small but beautiful old quarter 
in the city of Rochester whose sufficient 
designation is the number of the ward. It 
has an individuality and quaintness all its own, 
comparable to " The Heights " of Brooklyn 
and old Washington Square, New York ; but 
more marked in some ways than either of 
these. This is felt in Rochester, but is not 
often put into words. 

The district does not include the whole of 
that Third ward whose name it has rendered 
famous ; but no Rochesterian needs to be told 
what it does include. Perhaps it is to the 
ward's advantage that the district has had no 
room to grow. At any rate, in the center of 
the city, its small area has maintained the 
character of a little village ; and when you go 

5 



away from home and report that you live in 
Rochester, people ask if you live in the Third 
ward. The question is one which always 
makes its residents happy and proud. 

The community's characteristics are thus 
distinct. It is not far fetched fondly to liken 
it to a village. Not only does one find the 
general air of one among the old homesteads 
in their ample gardens along the tree-arched 
streets ; but there are the simple customs, the 
pride of locality and pride of family, the petty 
leaders, whose pretentions are thoroughly un- 
derstood; the little stores on the borders — 
some of them very village-like. And the ward 
has a history of its own, and churches, and 
schools, and a public library, and just enough 
poor to keep its sympathies alive. It even 
has its city cousins over on the East-side, or 
elsewhere, with whom to interchange visits, 
and from whom it learns how to dress and 
how to act in that big, showy, heartless, world 
that lies somewhere beyond the old Third 
ward and doubtless thinks it sleepy. 

But those others, who dwell in the parts of 



Rochester where there is city, not village, life, 
lose — whatever the beauty of their environ- 
ment — something of the story-book pictur- 
esqueness, in scene and deed, which is the 
Third warder's heritage. It is that which the 
latter would not exchange for Mayfair or the 
Faubourgs. 

ffrtenMiness. 

Everybody knows everybody else on the 
short broad streets of the ward — and knows 
all about them. It is said, indeed, by the 
East-siders in Rochester, that Third warders 
are gossips ; and is not that a village failing ? 
But if they have this weakness of a small 
community, they have also its virtues. There 
is a neighborliness in the old-fashioned, 
country sense of the word ; the neighborliness 
that is friendly to the verge of love, that is 
first to congratulate in joy and the first to 
comfort in sorrow, that is thoughtful to help, 
loyal to defend, that lends and borrows with 
equal pleasure; that friendliness which runs 



in and out, makes morning " visits " and 
hatless calls, whose femininity accepts, but 
does not require, evening escorts, since every 
house is the house of a friend and the streets 
are free of a city's wickedness. 

It is worth while to be sick in the Third 
ward, for the test of its friendliness — for the 
dainties which its mistress-cooks shower on 
one, and the books that come out of its private 
libraries, the flowers from its spacious gardens, 
and the stream of inquiries at the door. The 
Third ward never seems more delightfully 
village-like than at such a time; unless in 
summer, when the piazzas are the living rooms 
and the whole neighborhood almost one big 
house for one big family. 

The life then, as long as it is permissible to 
be in town, is spent on the piazzas. Not a 
house in the district lacks one. They are of 
various kinds, but you may be sure that they 
all command a view of the street and the 
neighbors. The fancy work is done, the 
newspapers are read, out there, and all but the 
suppers eaten on them. These suppers — 



Third warders have suppers still, at least in 
summer — are early ; and from quarter to seven 
until long after darkness has descended on the 
shady streets, the district gives itself up to 
informal piazza visiting. 

Social Hffatrs, 

Ostentation is frowned upon in the Third 
ward. It would be foolish there, for if it were 
not justified it would not mislead ; and if it is 
justifiable it is not needed. The living is 
simple and wholesome in the lack of display. 
The great balls are not there. On the night 
of one, the usually quiet streets resound with 
the rumble of carriages, invitations have come 
to almost every house ; but those who accept 
have a long ride before them. The greatest 
festivity is a wedding. Local etiquette permits 
brilliancy and lavishness for that, for it is a 
family event — it will have mention in the 
genealogies. Or there may be a woman's 
reception and luncheon ; but dance music and 
the sound of revelry by night are not for those 

9 



solemn, ancient precincts. Its hospitality is 
still of the old-fashioned sort, with the "tea 
parties," readings, whist, and charades. 

There are a deal of club meetings, too. A 
hall in the library has been set aside for that 
purpose, and Third ward women are strong in 
clubs. But it might be well if one other were 
founded : a club for mothers who, in the 
social season, have to sit up often and late for 
dancing daughters. The club might be called 
*' The Owls." The meetings could be held 
around at the different houses, in turn, and 
though now and again the sessions would be 
nightly, the members would find them prefer- 
able to sitting up in loneliness at home, for 
the mothers are as true and intimate friends 
each to the other as are their daughters. The 
time of convening would depend, of course, 
upon the hour indicated in the invitations to 
the giddy "buds," and the sessions would not 
close until "the wee sma' hours," when the 
debutantes' carriages come rolling home. 
Suppose there was a ball on the East- side. 
By half past nine o'clock, certainly by ten, a 

10 



quorum of the club mothers would have 
gathered. Instead of sitting up at their 
respective houses, as under the present bar- 
barous system, yawning and blinking until 
2 A. M. or after, with their writing, sewing, and 
thinking all concluded before midnight, they 
could discuss D. A. R., hold a "Twig," play 
whist, gossip, and through the charm of one 
another's society, and the potency of the 
hostess's strong coffee, keep awake without 
trouble — almost in comfort — until the lately 
dancing debutantes called with their carriages 
to pick them up and take them home. When 
the function was a dinner, so that the club 
could adjourn earlier, the fathers might also 
be invited. To be sure, it is a marvel to some 
of us why a mother cares to sit up, why she 
submits to the long, weary vigil for the girl 
who always comes home all right, who can 
unhook her ball gown and draw off the long 
gloves without assistance, who just kisses her 
"good night," whispers a word or two, and 
steals away to bed as if the mother had waited 
minutes instead of hours. But each Third 

11 



ward mother does it. She hasn't forgotten 
the season when she was a bud. The old fire 
still glimmers ; dreams can be backward as 
well as forward; and the faded, shaken roses 
which droop on the debutante's gown, the 
bright ones that nod in her cheeks, the 
broken fan, the soiled gloves, the still dancing 
eyes, have they no message that pays the 
mother for waiting ? The butterfly free from 
its chrysalis has not the charm of the pretty girl 
taking off her party cloak after the dance, in the 
subdued light of a silent house. The loving^ 
faithful, remembering mother waits and waits 
for that vision, and goes to bed repaid by the 
smile, the kiss, and the whisper. 

But the great social event of the Third ward, 
making frequency of occurrence an element of 
greatness, is a " Donation." Nearly all of 
these are held at a place convenient for the 
ward, and when the day of one comes the 
smoothly running domestic machinery of the 
district is completely upset. There is a notion 
that our " Donations " are one of the most 
peculiar and characteristic features of Roches- 

12 



ter's social aspect ; but fully to appreciate what 
they mean one should be in, and of, the Third 
ward at such a time. Early in the morning 
the mistresses of the big houses are wending 
their way to the site of the conflict, their white 
aprons neatly rolled up in brown paper under 
their arms, and grotesquely shaped packages 
of fancy work in their hands. A little later, 
go the housemaids with bowls of salad, 
baskets of celery, and loaves of cake. At 
noon, an air of unusual desertion hangs over 
the ward. The men have not returned to 
deserted homes. They are at the " Donation " 
for dinner. These days are the only ones in 
the year when Third ward men do not go 
home at mid-day — or tell the reason why. 
There is no calling on '' Donation " after- 
noons. The rows of houses are silent still, 
save now and then, when one woman has 
extricated herself from the turmoil and social 
attractions of the bazaar and has regretfully 
taken herself home. There are few suppers 
in the ward that night ; but about ten o'clock, 
or half an hour later, patient men may be seen 

13 



leading very tired women homeward. The 
aprons are no longer neatly rolled. Even 
leaders of fashion wear them shamelessly, 
though cranberry juice be spilled down the 
front. Bonnets are perched over caps, arms 
are filled with packages, and men struggle 
with market baskets of picture frames and 
patties. So night, closing over an unusual 
scene of gayety, beholds a dear little nest of a 
ward weary in well doing. 

(^oim Hwai^ ant) doming Iborne^ 

The district's neighborliness perhaps finds 
its most distinctive expression in those " good 
byes " and " welcome homes " which it ex- 
tends to the summer travelers. It is a custom 
to leave on or about the first of August, at 
latest, and the travelers do not begin to leak 
back until two weeks have elapsed. Some of 
them stay for six. This custom is so well es- 
tablished, the exodus is so complete, that the 
household owes an explanation to the neighbor- 
hood if, having been at home through July, it 

14 



lingers beyond August first. The most grace- 
ful excuse is tliat " Rochester is so pleasant 
in summer." Third warders, who are proud 
with reason of their breeding, always accept 
this explanation and then give theories of 
their own in discussing it afterwards among 
themselves. 

When a resident is going away for the vaca- 
tion everybody knows it and everybody is 
interested. It is " proper " to call, that is, to 
run over to the piazza if any of the household 
is sitting out, and if not to go boldly up to the 
front door and ring the bell and demand to 
see the departing tourist that you may express 
your good wishes. In one case of this sort a 
family had eighty-two calls before departing. 
Perhaps it interfered a little with the packing, 
but how flattering it was, how pleasant ! No 
one would change the custom for the world. 
It is one of the amenities of Third ward life. 
It makes you feel as though you were some- 
body. In a city you have all the fun of vil- 
lage prominence. 

As the hour of departure approaches the 

15 



neighbors are all on the piazzas, for a detailed 
account of your plans has long been public 
property. First, however, there has been the 
excitement of having your trunks go. No real 
Third warder would miss that. It is next best 
fun to the rare removal. She (or he) will note 
the number of trunks, speculate on their con- 
tents, and wonder about the pressure required 
to close them and the tightness of the straps 
that, for all the world, are like belts made 
tight by Thanksgiving dinners. 

When you yourself are ready to depart, you 
receive a volley of nods and smiles and waved 
hands and shouted adieux that is sure to keep 
the district dear to your heart however far you 
travel. But there is a rule, one of those in- 
violable social laws of the locality, that must 
be lived up to in departing. You must go 
away in a carriage. Perhaps you have regu- 
larly walked miles to save car fare and think 
nothing of walking to the station to see a 
friend ; but when you yourself are the traveler 
the carriage is necessary. It is to be counted 
as a part of the trip's expense. 

16 



If the Third warder is starting for Europe, 
and every summer has its httle quota of these 
tourists, it is the thing for the most inti- 
mate friends to go to the station. They will 
make their usual adieux at your house and 
then '^ surprise" you by turning up in the sta- 
tion waiting room. If you happen to know 
one of them is going, and have expostulated 
sufficiently, it is all right if you offer that friend 
a seat in your carriage to drive " over" and see 
yourself off ! And when the train has drawn 
out of the station, you can think of your 
friends as light-heartedly climbing into your 
carriage and having a very good time driving 
home in it. Who would exchange so jolly a 
mode of departure ? 

The return is more complicated, more elab- 
orate, more systematized. A newcomer 
might easily make mistakes, for the degree of 
welcome to be administered is to be graded 
according to the time of absence and the dis- 
tance traveled. If you have been away only 
two weeks and have not gone far, you must be 
content to receive merely a " Glad to see you 

17 



back." You must remember that the ward is 
disguising its feelings, is trying to appear blase, 
and to give you the impression that you have 
not traveled far — for a Third warder. Other- 
wise you will feel a little ashamed of yourself 
when you get back and will mistakenly try to 
bluff it oif with an enthusiastic account of 
what a good time you had. If you have really 
had a great trip, the district cannot do too 
much for you. Your house will be ablaze with 
light. There will be flowers in all the rooms 
— not in boxes, but in vases with " welcome 
home" cards stuck up against them, for your 
friends will have invaded your sanctum to ar- 
range them. There will be a reception for you 
on the piazza and a triumphal march from the 
carriage to the steps. And every evening 
after that there will be callers, until the entire 
district has paid its respects. It will come in 
one by one. The visitor will begin by express- 
ing an eagerness to hear " all about your good 
times," and then will tell you what — being a 
Third warder — you are of course most anxious 
to know, the news and gossip of the town. 

18 



This will consume the time of the call, and 
your visitor, having reproached you for not 
telling more about your trip, will promise to 
come again to hear that. After all, that is the 
thing that can best wait. 

When tourists return to different households 
about the same time, the requirement of eti- 
quette is that the one who should wait to be 
called upon is the one who has traveled the 
furthest, not the one who has been away a 
week or two longer. The ward's whole cere- 
mony of coming and going is singularly sweet, 
village-like, almost childlike, and one must 
hope that it will not change. It is a thing to 
look forward to, and a thing to remember 
fondly if you ever move away. 

Carriages* 

There is one Third ward trait which East- 
siders " simply love." Doubtless, as there 
should be, there is more than one. This is 
the district's carriage etiquette, though one 
hesitates to speak of the deportment which 
comes from true gentleness as only " etiquette." 

19 



And the East-siders do not sneer about it. 
What native of Rochester does not trace a 
connection, less or more remote, with that 
famous little area of '' the " ward and feel a 
pride in its peculiarities ? 

There are not as many carriages in "the 
ruffled shirt district" as there are out on East 
avenue ; but of course there are some, and a 
good many of the other families, with tall 
clocks and old oil portraits, hire carriages 
from convenient liveries whenever they want 
to ride. The East-side is a long way off; 
street cars are hard on good clothes, and so, 
when a distant hostess has summoned Third 
warders in large numbers to her home, a 
stranger would be surprised to see how quickly 
the district's kindly neighborliness finds useful 
vent. Those who own horses run about to 
those who have none and make up parties to 
fill their carriages ; those who hire them any- 
way hire the biggest they can get and do the 
same ; those who, waiting hopefully until the 
last moment yet receive no invitation to drive, 
club together and "go shares." 

20 



The carriages rumble away from the Third 
ward with a great deal of style, waking unusual 
echoes and leaving the trees to shake their tall 
heads and whisper together about the good old 
times. But when the coaches reach the ele- 
gant East-side and drive up to the house of 
the function, they appear less impressive. 
They discharge their loads like carry-alls. The 
Third ward arrives in battalions, so to speak. 
When you see one Third warder enter the 
room you can look around for half a dozen. 
When one says ^' Good night," you must pre- 
pare to see a party go ; and if you are a keen 
observer and have nothing else on your mind 
you can have a very good time as you drift 
around from room to room watching the grad- 
ual and slow collection of the parties, prepara- 
tory to leaving. 

One can imagine how East-siders obtain 
amusement from the spectacle ; but it has its 
pretty side. The custom is probably as uni- 
versal nowhere else as in that little district, 
where one's resources are well known to one's 
neighbors, where there is little pretense, and 



where tact suggests that the carriage people, 
in giving their kind and helpful invitation, hint 
that the obligation is all on their side — for the 
pleasure of the company. 

And there is a very real pleasure in that — 
a rare fun in talking the function over, in a 
crowded carriage, before a half-night's sleep 
has dulled first impressions and destroyed 
enthusiasm. Some Third warders look back 
upon the drives they have had to a function, 
or home from it, as the pleasantest part of the 
entertainment, It is a little matter, but it is a 
feature of the ward. 

Collecttna Xeaves* 

Many are the strange things to be found in 
the old Third ward. It is not merely that the 
community is old fashioned, or that it is ever 
content with something short of the best ; but 
just because it does not care for appearances, 
if only a thing be good. If a thing be useful 
and serve its purpose well, and if it has in 
addition the respectability of age, there are no 



questions asked. The district's most conven- 
tional quality is its unconventionality. So 
they must be strangers to its spirit who 
wonder, stare, and laugh at one of the con- 
trivances for removing fallen leaves. 

A man who is paid by the people of the 
district — not by the city — pushes the affair, 
which, seen at a little distance from behind, 
looks like a huge baby carriage. It is large 
enough to have served for the infancy of a 
circus giant and still have left room for a twin. 
A nearer and more oblique view destroys the 
resemblance to the baby carriage, for it is 
then seen that the lower portion of the vehicle 
is not, as to the body, sui generis. It is 
patchy, foreign, an ingenious but not inevita- 
ble combination. The wheels, in short, were 
plainly put beneath the strange, graceless bulk 
of body for a purpose. 

As one draws nearer still to the contrivance, 
recognition is gained suddenly. It is seen to 
be one of those hooded beach-chairs, with 
little glass eye-windows where ears should be, 
laid flat on its back on the axles of two pair 

23 



of wheels. It is the beach chair of the prints 
of fifty years ago ; of the European watering 
place even of to-day, of Scheveningen, Ostend, 
and Brighton, but never of Long Branch, 
Coney Island, or Nantucket. What a fall 
from grace is this, to be tipped up, settled 
crudely on wheels, pushed along the gutter of 
an inland city, and filled with fallen leaves I 
Such a metamorphosis could be witnessed on 
no central street of all our cities, perhaps, out 
of a small and famous district of Rochester's 
Third ward. 

What a history that chair may have, what 
stories it might tell ! Was it in sadly mistaken 
use as a steamer chair when brought across 
the ocean ; and on what sands was it wont to 
stand long ago, what blue sea was pounding 
a dozen yards away, what fair face — long since 
old and wrinkled at the best — has it sheltered 
from wind and sun? Was it "Jane Austen" 
that was read excitedly beneath that hood, 
were they blue eyes or brown that peered 
coyly through the little windows and fell again 
demurely to the book, as a gallant of long ago 

24 



stepped round the corner of the chair and 
tried to see within ? Ah, doubtless Spring sat 
in the chair years gone, personified ; and now 
the grossest flatterer of the ward can see only 
Autumn as the sere and yellow leaf fills it to 
the brim. It has found its proper home at 
last and its sphere of usefulness has half 
poetic justice. 

Iboliba^s anb CoasttuG. 

Holidays in the Third ward are observed 
much as elsewhere in the city. There was a 
time, to be sure, when New Year's day took 
on a character of its own in the big, hospitable 
mansions; but that was years ago when the 
day was a time for calling and good wishes 
everywhere. It was one of the social laws of 
Rochester then that the calls on East-side 
women had to be made in the forenoon. The 
West-side, which was to say at that time the 
Third ward, reserved the late afternoon and 
evening. You would see the men, at ten 
o'clock in the morning, in dress suits and 

25 



high hats, starting forth in Uttle parties that 
filled carriages — or sleighs with jingling bells, 
or even "four-in-hands" — to pay the day's 
respects over the river. And do not think 
that Third ward women were left at home. 
Such was the social instinct of the district 
that they would receive twice : In the morning 
with their East-side acquaintances, and in 
the evening at home. 

When the early darkness settled over the 
ward and the men returned, houses were 
ablaze with light, women were in evening 
gowns and jewels, the long tables in the 
dining rooms glittered with glass and silver, 
and punch and coffee were steaming hot to 
ward against the cold. There were meats, 
salads, and dainties galore, and everywhere 
the shades were up and the blinds open 
that the cordiality might reach enticingly into 
the street. For there used to be a rivalry 
between the hostesses as to which had the 
longest list of calls. At rush moments names 
were written in the caller's very presence, but 
amends, if they were needed, were gloriously 

26 



made. How the mistresses of the Third ward 
shone those nights, what graciousness, what 
wit and smiles, what entertainment was pro- 
vided ! Those were times that tried men's 
souls, when there was barely a hundred feet 
of cool air and the silence of wintry night 
between the houses. But the spaces grew 
longer, the card baskets appeared more often 
on the silver bell knobs, and the Third ward 
conformed at last to the dictum of the world. 

Thereafter St. Valentine's day and Hal- 
lowe'en became, perhaps, the most distinct- 
ively successful holidays. That is because 
the ward's shady streets, broad lawns, and 
gardens, furnish to little boys (and little girls) 
such grand places in which to hide. There is 
a whole jungle of back yards with the strangest 
passes and trails, over fences and through 
alley gates, which none but the children know. 
From the street one would not dream of the 
wilderness of short-cuts behind these houses. 

In winter, when the passes are more or less 
snowbound, the sport of the neighborhood is 
coasting. Troup street hill, which the chil- 

27 



dren (who are so often right) call " the " hill, 
rises high enough to allow a "bob" to run a 
block and a half. When the sliding is good, 
you can almost always see a group of merry- 
makers there. If you go after dark, you will 
find the grown folk too — not " the young and 
old," for all are young on those occasions, but 
the tall and short of the old Third ward. 
Sometimes it is an invitation affair, with an 
oyster supper afterwards ; but more often it is 
simply a rally for a neighborhood frolic of all 
who are in the mood. They have such a little 
hill to climb that there is all fun and no work. 

XTbe (3reat XTrtaL 

There was a time when the residents of the 
old Third ward — " the ruffled shirt ward," as 
East-siders yearningly call it — were inevitably 
staid and dignified. With the old-time court- 
liness they were orderly, were punctual in 
their engagements, and yet were never seen to 
hurry. Beneath the over-arching trees of their 
broad thoroughfares, past the grand old 



porticoed residences that are like Grecian 
temples, they walked with such leisure and 
dignity of bearing as the old Athenians might 
have had in like surroundings. That was the 
time when the Third ward established the 
entrenching reputation which it has been able 
since to hold. 

It is still fitting that no modern means of 
rapid transit penetrates that classic district; 
that an old canal whose slow-going boats still 
preach (and practice) deliberation, divides it 
from the rush and turmoil of the business 
streets; and that over each entrance to this 
quiet district in the heart of the city there 
should swing a sign that threatens a fine of 
$25 for anyone who shall drive his horse 
faster than a walk. And yet no hustling sub- 
urbanite, running for a car, could call the 
Third ward slow, or could, until the hour of 
trial, boast of greater punctuality for all his 
haste. 

But a change came. Third warders were 
put to the sorest test of their lives and were 
not as they used to be. A harrassed expres- 



sion supplanted the old placid smile of self- 
content ; ancient timepieces — huge gold 
watches that generations of descendants had 
dented with first teeth — were brought out 
hastily; there were anxious looks, hurried 
steps, and engagements badly kept. The city 
perceived that time was on the mind of the 
residents of that beautiful old quarter where it 
had seemed as though time slept. 

There was much the matter. Time, as 
represented by the Plymouth church clock, 
had slept, awakened, and fallen to sleep again ; 
had, apparently, walked in its sleep and talked 
in its sleep; had minded its business for a 
little while and then lapsed into evil ways 
again ; in short, acted most discreditably to 
its past and name. In another locality the 
condition would not have been borne in 
silence ; but Third warders learn patience at 
the canal bridges, and never forget them- 
selves. Their decorum is perfect; and yet 
their quiet good times, their love and sympa- 
thy, the famous cookery of their women, prove 
that they are human. 



There may be places in Rochester where a 
clock that struck twenty-eight on an occasion 
of no particular significance would be admired. 
The Third ward is not one of them. There 
are other communities where dependence on 
the public timepiece is not of the absolutism 
born of heredity ; in the Third ward it is bred 
in the bone. The stroke of Plymouth clock 
has opened the Third ward's outside blinds in 
the morning and put out its lights at night for 
years ; the face of that clock has been the 
standard of truth for all the little clocks of the 
neighborhood. But in the final compensation 
of things time told on the hands that had told 
time so long. 

It had been understood for more winters 
than a few that exceptionally cold weather, 
blizzards, etc., would stop the clock; but the 
ruffled shirt warders were too loyal to tell of 
its weakness. They kept it to themselves, 
used their own watches, and in a few days, 
when the weather sufficiently moderated, the 
clock would go on again. But in the hour of 
the great trial, with the weather warm and cold, 

31 



damp and dry, it spent many weeks pointing 
to 12:20. Then it got around to eight minutes 
to six, and there it stopped again. And so, 
by fits and starts, and jerks and balks, and 
too much striking or failure to strike at all, it 
roused a respectable neighborhood, it did no 
end of mischief, caused delays, and led to 
needless hurry in erstwhile quiet streets. At 
last, in response to public indignation, the 
clock was repaired. 

TTbe XKIlar^'s Cbanges* 

Some there are who suspect a change of 
the district's character. Perhaps it does 
change ; but everything is slow there, so change 
must be, and it would not be admitted to 
residence nor gain the entree of good houses 
if it did not come well introduced and with its 
lineal descent from the ancient ways explained. 
One does not look, then, for revolutions in 
the ward, and even evolutions have a strangely 
fascinating way of assuming local color. 

When the electric light was introduced — 



there are a few blocks still that cling to gas 
lamps — it was said that the romantic charm of 
a Third ward summer evening would pass 
away. The old residents said they might as 
well live in Omaha as on streets with electric 
lights ; the young men asked what was the 
use of a moon that made mysteriously dark 
corners if suns were to be suspended at half- 
block intervals on the streets ; and the chil- 
dren, playing in the neighbors' front yards, 
declared they would not know when to come 
home for it wouldn't "get dark." The dis- 
content took practical form in an opposition 
to the poles and then to the stringing of the 
wires, but a " soulless " corporation trod on 
fine sensibilities, there were some parvenus 
who were traitors, and electric lights came. 
The charm, however, of Third ward summer 
evenings remained. One could not turn down 
the light, as is still done by some of the piazza 
people on the plea that the gas lamp's feeble 
flame shines in their eyes — in this strange 
little rus in urbe ; but the big trees hang over 
the electric globes like most fascinating lamp- 

33 



shades, and a Venetian blind will always make 
a dark corner of piazza if there is not one 
naturally. So the electric lights have done no 
harm. 

It is the same with the occasional apartment 
houses that have wedged themselves into the 
district. They are metropolitan in nothing 
but height, for a few old residents moving into 
them appear to have leavened the colony. 
And the new pavements, clean as they are, 
lose the air of novelty that should go with spic 
and span appearance since other things are 
old though neat ; and finally the lift-bridges — 
across the moat of this social castle — have 
proved unable to effect a revolution. That is 
what comes of having well developed individ- 
uality, of having neighborhood characteristics 
bred, so to speak, in the bone. 

Serious danger threatened once, when a 
gerrymandering legislature, renumbering the 
wards of Rochester, decreed that the Third be 
called the Second. But the community rose 
in righteous wrath that was heard even in 
Albany ; and during the brief interval before 

S4 



an amendment was passed restoring the 
ward's original designation, no one thought to 
name it except as " the old " Third. So out 
of that danger, also, came victory. 

Ube Mart)'5 past. 

Third ward traits would be incomplete 
without mention of Third ward characters. 
There is a list of them long enough to fill a 
stoiy book, if one dared to publish it. Indi- 
viduality is really a thing to be proud of ; but 
strangely enough we none of us like to be 
called " peculiar," and loyalty to friends and 
family is one of the strongest of Third ward 
traits. So we may not name Mrs. E — , the 
rich recluse of twenty years, who bought her 
house before she had seen it from a man she 
did not know ; nor Mrs. S — , still remembered 
for her gowns, and jewels, and cards; nor 
shall we speak of any of the living, though 
here a beautiful lesson might be drawn from 
life-long friendship through weal and woe, and 
there — and there again — a rare picture of 



family affection and consecration. Here is 
a lingering type of the grand lady or the old- 
time gentleman, there the scholar, there the 
beloved and skilled physician, and here the 
Lady Bountiful. And prettiest of all, with 
hardly a trace of sadness, and dearest to the 
old Third ward, are the vestiges here and 
there of faded splendor, of a neat if frayed 
gentility, of smiles through unshed tears like 
sun through clouds, and honest pride and 
self-respect where present props to the world's 
consideration must have failed. Blessed past, 
that throws its glory still on faded coats and 
with sunset magic touches to royal purple ! 

Nor shall we speak of the lately dead. 
Where love is very strong and proximity 
spells friendship, where neighbors dwell near 
indeed in interests and sympathy, this subject 
were too sacred for any but the kindest, 
gentlest touch, which, in that little district, 
must ever be the personal. 

But writ large across the old ward's history 
are yet many famous names, which are the 
heritage of a whole community. It is always 



a surprise to students of Rochester to find 
what a number of its great names belong to 
the Third ward. Old houses of the Rochester 
and Montgomery families still stand there; 
and on an eminence, its white pillars holding 
high the overhanging, balustraded roof, is the 
house of the first mayor. For Jonathan Child 
was a Third warder ; and in the next house to 
his, later occupied by Oscar Craig — himself 
one of the ward's and state's good men — dwelt 
Vincent Mathews, the first village trustee 
distinctively to represent the ward, the first 
city attorney of Rochester, the first lawyer 
admitted to practice in the courts of what 
was then Ontario county, and hence called 
"the father of the bar." In this ward dwelt, 
too, Everard Peck, who brought books as his 
gift to the struggling Rochester; here lived 
Dr. Chester Dewey, the loved teacher and 
scientist of early days. Here the pioneer, 
Abelard Reynolds, passed part of his life and 
died ; here, later, lived that girl who, as Lady 
Randolph Churchill, was to carry Third ward 
training into the noblest English houses ; and 

37 



here, to come home again, Uved Lewis H. 
Morgan, who made himself a national authority 
in his field. Across the way from his home 
was the pillared mansion of Chancellor 
Whittlesey. 

There are many more names than these. 
These are but a beginning; but they write 
Rochester's name high in culture and achieve- 
ment ; and to their gifts to the community the 
little district added, one by one, the charities 
which its noble women — "the first ladies " of 
Rochester — there founded, in their love and 
gentleness, for a growing city's needs. What 
wonder that an area with a past so locally 
distinguished is called the ancient home in 
Rochester of ruffled shirts, and glories in the 
title ? 

Something, as we have seen, of the Southern 
hospitality was in those houses of Southern 
type, something of the South's old-time 
courtliness of manner came thither to mix 
with New England's rigid conscience and 
sternly high ideal. And out of those friend- 
ships and that union came the best history of 






Rochester, and have come the conditions dear 
to the Third ward — those which have enabled 
the district still to resist surrounding changes, 
to remain to its inheritance and traditions, of 
which it is proud, conspicuously true. In 
them is the secret of the permanence of its 
traits. 



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